News and Events

Keep up to date with the latest news and events of Modular Bikes.

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Canberra Ride

Dome, Near Lake Burley Griffin & Floriade

Dome with phone, watch and gps, negotiating a route and when to meet up with Brett.

Brett's awesome petrol powered chopper trike.

Greenspeed under shade awning.

Wayne Kotzur built wheelchair based trike, its front wheel drive and rear wheel steer.


Brett and Dome

Brett and Dome and a few high unicycles.

Trisled tandem velomobile

A long bike bought from the Canberra Bike museum. Driver at front with 2 shaded rear passengers facing each other

Recumbent Pedalboat foreground. Brett a trike and dog background.


Canberrs bikepaths with Brett and Dome.


Some of these paths we went over twice, they were very pleasant and varied.

Brett and Dome

Back at the start.
Hi

Yesterday, Dome and I both came through from Wagga Wagga to Canberra and as previously arranged, rode to visit Brett Edwards in Gilmore. Brett runs Recumbent & Specialised Cycling with great enthusiasm and was happy to show us his 5 velomobiles, Aquabike, and stock and personal collections of bikes and trikes. Very impressive! 

The ride there was a bit tough and uphill but fuelled by Egg and Bacon rolls at a caff, and Dome's gps hiccupped a couple of times.  In the end a few bikepaths somehow got us to Brett's palace. The trip back was much quicker following the Monaro highway, but we still had a bit of lakeside bikepath at the end. Thanks Dome and Brett for organizing the visit.


Saturday, September 28, 2019

Wagga Wagga 100

Mangoplah

Near The Rock

The Rock

Oversize farm equipment passing near the rock


Near Uranquity

Uranquity Power Station

Bees near Uranquity

free range chooks in Uranquity

Done and dusted, about a 17kph average.

Wagga is in the Riverana district West of Sydney and the district was very proud to have 5 players in the Western Sydney Giants team in today's AFL grand final. Well the Giants made it to the MCG but not much further unfortunately! They got done by Richmond 114 points to 25 points. There is still next year!
Hi, here are a few photos of today's Audax ride South of Wagga Wagga.  The last third was a bit tough, but champagne cycling through lovely scenery for the first two thirds. Thanks to Wagga Wagga local Peter Makin for running the rides.  I was on my own on the 100k, Dome Deli was on his own on the 200k, and 4 riders including 2 from Adelaide are still out there suffering through a 600k.

Best Wishes

Steve Nurse

Update November 4: Thanks to Peter Makin and Bec Morton, the bling (left) for the bike arrived, and I mounted it in my bling display. See this post in my design blog for more details.

Thursday, September 12, 2019

Weighing In


Hi

A few days ago, I put some trikes through a switcheroo process, mainly to set up a trike for delivery to fringe furniture. This involved removing the seat and fairing from this trike and getting the tailbox from the electric trike.  So rather than just do the switcheroo, I weighed a few parts when they were separated from trikes. 

Minimum weight for timber tailbox is just below 4.3 kg, this is when the panels and lid of the box is swapped out to corflute tailbox. In the pic it has a Ventisit seat pad which is not strictly necessary and could be removed if required.

The timber tailbox with timber panels and lid weighs just over 5.4 kg, and the fibreglass seat with 3d printed plastic and supports weighs about 2.2. The fairing weighs 1.4.

All for now, Regards

Steve Nurse


Sunday, September 1, 2019

Cad Pictures from John Bird

John's pdf and drawings draw on ...

photos he took of my trike in Coburg.














Current fairing trike is discussed in this post.
Current Electric trike is discussed in this post.

Hi

If you haven't noticed already, I have some slightly unusual bikes, and when I'm out and about shopping don't mind talking about them and will often hand out a business card so anyone who wants to can follow up by looking up my website and blog and instagram.

About a month ago outside Aldi in Coburg I spoke to John Bird, who is an engineer who uses electric cars to teach driving through his business Ezeedrive. John is also associated with the Aurora Solar Car Team.   I didn't  think too much of it at the time, but within a few weeks he had come back to me with a pdf of several possibilities for my bike including a series hybrid electric drive, carbon tailbox, integrated lights, fairing and solar panel. Several of his pictures and snips from the pdf are shown above.

So, I was able to write back that I was already across a lot of the topics mentioned in his pdf.  My ATRF article from last year was about series hybrids, and the preprint for this year's conference article discusses fairings and solar panels on bikes and velomobiles.  Anyway, although I use cad to make trikes, my presentation cad ability is not that great, and I was very glad that John lent his considerable skills to showing some possibilities for my trike design.

For some further background on the preprint, see this post in my design blog.

Regards

Best Wishes

Steve Nurse

Stop Press: John has visited a couple of times, and tried out my trikes in including the electric trike.  Here he is about to launch.
John Bird, trike testing and learning.